CPP to bet on NZ dairy?

This, I like.

Recall that Canada runs a ridiculous dairy cartel. When I teased the Dairy Farmers of Canada about the high price of baby formula in Canada, they said I wasn't playing fair as Canada doesn't even produce baby formula; it's all imported. Meanwhile, Chinese companies are set to invest a few hundred million adding to New Zealand's already extensive capacity in that area.

But Canada has the world's best dairy system, if you ask the guys running the cartel.

What happens if you ask the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board?

Mark Wiseman, chief executive of the $A170 billion fund, will visit Australia this month amid the group’s expanding portfolio of interests across the Tasman. ...

Mr Wiseman says he anticipates low growth in Europe and the US for years. He believes agriculture offers huge potential.

“Australia is one of the jurisdictions [where] we’re looking at the agricultural industry broadly, right from land on up through the infrastructure to support it, including things like ports,” he says in the UBS Global Leaders Insights Series on Sky News Business. ...

ANZ Bank has estimated that Australia, to take advantage of the export potential to meet the growing demand for food from the rising middle class in China and Asia more broadly, will require more than $A1.5 trillion in financing to the year 2050.

It says Australia and New Zealand could double the real value of agricultural exports by 2050, and that could mean up to an additional $A1.7 trillion (in 2011 dollars) in revenues over the next four decades if production increased and there was a shift to higher-value products. Australia has fallen behind in agricultural reform and investment, while New Zealand has become the world’s largest dairy exporter, having seized the advantage of China’s growing thirst for milk and opened the doors for reciprocal investment.

“One of the things that’s most interesting about agriculture is, unlike the other resources, it’s obviously a renewable resource and there’s a certain attraction to being able to invest in the development of renewable resources like agricultural products,” Mr Wiseman says.

Canada's basically ruled itself out of this market. Because of supply management.

I can imagine some Canadians who just might have preferred that the CPP were able to make those kinds of investments in Canada.

Recall that it doesn't have to be that way. There's a way out. Buy out the cartel.